Misty’s Voice Actor Passing Away
Voice actress Rachael Lillis, has passed away at the age of 46 due to breast cancer. She was most well-known for her roles as Misty and Jessie in the English dub of Pokemon, before the cast was changed in 2006. She also voiced Utena in the English dub of Revolutionary Girl Utena, some Pokemon, including Jigglypuff in Pokemon Detective Pikachu, and Princess Charlotte in the English dub of Beserk.
In May 2024, her sister had created a GoFundMe to help raise money for her care, a campaign that many of her fellow voice actors contributed to.
Turkey Bans Roblox
Roblox, the very popular free-to-play online game, has recently been banned in Turkey over concerns of child exploitation.
Roblox has faced some criticism since launching in 2006, with reports suggesting that the game isn’t safe for minors. Bloomberg reported that in July, Roblox submitted over 13,000 reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023, and an executive suggested that perhaps the game could “provide jobs to kids living in slums”. The company had released a statement claiming that the majority of creators are over 18, and the company has never hired teenagers.
Turkey’s ban was largely driven by reports of alleged child exploitation, as well as reports of in-game sexual content.
A Roblox spokesperson has stated “We respect the laws and regulations in countries where we operate, and share local lawmakers’ commitment to children. We look forward to working together to ensure Roblox is back online in Turkey as soon as possible.”
Well, Borderlands 3 Is Doing Well
Borderlands: The Movie, hasn’t had the easiest time at the box office, with a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and only pulling in $8.9 million USD in its first weekend. However, Borderlands 3 has had an increase in players with the movie’s release, peaking at 12,379 players, a significant increase for a 5 year old game.
Borderlands 2, Borderlands, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel has also had an uptick in players, at least according to Steam.
Gearbox did launch a feature for Borderlands 3 that allows the player to skip the main campaign with a new character, as long as you’ve previously beaten the campaign once and have a max-level character, so returning players will have an easier time getting to the endgame, so that works out well.
Toxic Chess
Amina Abakarova, a Russian chess player, has allegedly attempted to poison an opponent using mercury, a famously toxic element. Chess, like any game, can get pretty heated, and extremely competitive, but normally these heated interactions fall within the realm of fair play.
In this case, a chess tournament in Dagestan was cancelled when one of the players, a European champion named Umayganat Osmanova, became very unwell quite suddenly. After an investigation which revealed the presence of mercury on her table. Footage supposedly shows Amina spreading the metal across the table.
Umayganat is in stable condition, and Amina has been temporarily suspended from participating in all competitions until the conclusion of the investigation. She is likely to face legal consequences.
News Nibbles!
We still don’t know when the Switch 2 will launch, but it is not coming before April 2025. We don’t even really know if it’ll be called the Switch 2, nor do we know much about its specs, but we should receive an official announcement during the company’s current financial year, which wraps up in March 2025.
Cult of the Lamb now has local co-op in its most recent update, Unholy Alliance. The update has also added new items, quests, buildings, chores, and more. For local co-op, you just need to plug in a second controller and set up co-op through the pause menu.
Tango Gameworks, the publisher for Hi-Fi Rush, has been adopted by Krafton, welcome news after the studio was set to be shut-down by Microsoft.
And now for some upcoming games!
August 15th
- Dredge: The Iron Rig (DLC) – PC, Xbox, PS5, Nintendo Switch
- Kena: Bridge of Spirits – Xbox
August 16th
- Madden NFL 25 – PS4, PS5, Xbox, PC
- Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland – PC, Xbox, PS5
August 20th
- Black Myth: Wukong – PC, Xbox, PS5
- Dustborn – PS4, PS5, Xbox, PC
August 21st
- Enotria: The Last Song – PC, PS5
That’s it this week in gaming news!